In such experiments the molecular energy of a gas is converted into work only in virtue of the molecules being separated into classes in which their velocities are different, and these classes then allowed to act upon one another through the intervention of a suitable heat-engine.
In any heat-engine it is essential that the working substance should be at a high temperature while it is taking in heat, and at a relatively low temperature when it is rejecting heat.
A gun may be considered a simple thermo-dynamic machine or heat-engine which does its work in a single stroke, and does not act in a series of periodic cycles as an ordinary steam or gas-engine.
Artificial membranes are seldom or never perfectly semi-permeable - some leakage of solute nearly always occurs, but the imperfections of actual membranes need no more prevent our use of the ideal conception than the faults of real engines invalidate the theory of ideal thermodynamics founded on the conception of a perfect, reversible, frictionless, heat engine.
Another theory involves the use of the Stirling regenerator, which was proposed in connexion with the Stirling heat engine (see AIR Engines).
